"Savina Yannatou (Greek: , Sav�na Yann�tou; born March 16, 1959, Athens) is a Greek singer.

After taking classical guitar lessons and participating in the children's choir of Yannis Nousias for some years, she studied singing with Gogo Georgilopoulou and Spiros Sakkas in Athens, and later attended postgraduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In 1979 she began working as a professional and two years later participated in the recording of the critically acclaimed album � � ("Lilipoupolis here", that is, "We are broadcasting from Lilipoupolis"); following that, her career took off and has since released numerous albums, collaborating with many Greek composers. In the mid-1990s, she joined forces with select jazz / traditional musicians forming a band known as Primavera en Salonico, which started by interpreting Sephardic and Mediterranean songs, but later expanded to music from various areas of the world. Gradually, she has extended her vocal techniques to include throat singing, glossolalia and ululations among others.

Besides that, her repertoire consists mainly of Greek music, although she has been a founding member of an Early music ensemble ( ), and has always displayed a keen interest in exploring free jazz and avant-garde music. Said explorations have led her to on- and off-stage collaborations and sessions with international musicians such as Barry Guy, Peter Kowald, Floros Floridis, G�nther Pitscheider, Gerald Preinfalk of the band BPM, Ken Vandermark, Sussan Deyhim, Damo Suzuki of the krautrock group Can, and Kiya Tabassian of the Ensemble Constantinople.

Yannatou is also a songwriter ("Dreams of the mermaid. Is king Alexander alive?", "Rosa das Rosas", "Musique Des Chambres"), as well as a composer for theater, dance theater and video art. She occasionally participates in select workshops, teaching vocal improvisations to actors and musicians. She is currently an ECM artist."

"Julius Gabriel is a saxophonist and composer dedicating himself to the universal power of music. He is part of the Blue Shroud Band from Barry Guy, of the orchestra The Dorf, a founding member of About Angels and Animals, Blutiger Jupiter, Das Behälter, Ikizukuri, Paisiel and developing his original music as a solo artist. Among many others he performed with Gunter Hampel and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. He studied music at conservatories in Berlin and at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen."

"Agustí Fernández (Palma de Mallorca, 1954), with a perfectly based career and a well-deserved international reputation, is one of the Spanish musicians of major international projection and a world reference in the field of improvised music. Fernández has worked with famous musicians of the free improvisation scene like Peter Kowald, Derek Bailey, Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Mats Gustafsson, Joel Ryan and Peter Evans a.m.o. He is a member of the Blue Shroud Band, Mats Gustafsson NU Ensemble and Barry Guy New Orquestra. Up to the current date he has published more than 80 CD's

He has also worked with the recognised composer of contemporary music Héctor Parra, who composed in collaboration with the pianist FREC, a solo for expanded piano. FREC has been premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2013 with the collaboration of the video artist Lucas Caraba. He has conducted various improvised music ensembles like Ad Libitum Ensemble (Varsaw), Free Art Ensemble (Barcelona), Ansambl Studio 6 (Lujbljana) Orquesta FOCO (Madrid), Entenguerengue (Jérez de la Frontera), Impromtu Ensemble (Valencia), etc.

Along his professional life Agustí Fernández has received much recognition. His solo for piano "Mutza" presented in New York in 2007 was distinguished by the New York magazine AllAboutJazz as one of 10 best concerts from that year. The CD "Un llamp que no s'acaba mai" on PSI (Agustí Fernández, John Edwards and Mark Sanders) has been distinguished by Allaboutjazz as one of the best 10 cd's in 2009; the CD "Aurora" on Maya Recordings (Agustí Fernandez, Barry Guy and Ramón López) was selected by Cuadernos de Jazz magazine as the best CD in 2007, by the Jaç magazine as the best fourth disc of the history of the Catalan jazz and it was Disc d'émoi (February, 2007) for the French Jazz Magazine. The "Agustí Fernández Aurora Trio" received the second prize at the BMW Welt Jazz Award 2012 celebrated in Münich, Germany. In 2000 he received the Festival Altaveu Award, Sant Boi de Llobregat (Catalonia). In 2001 he received the FAD - Sebastià Guasch Award, Barcelona (Cataluña) with Andrés Corchero por el or the performance "A modo de esperanza". In 2011 Agustí Fernández was the main character of the documentary film "Los dedos huéspedes" by Lucas Caraba, which has been screened in several international festivals of documentary. In 2014 the Ad Libitum Festival (Warsaw) dedicated a monographic edition to celebrate Fernández's 60th Birthday.

He's professor of improvised music at the Escuela Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC). He's developing an important teaching activity in the field of improvised music and, among other, he has been teaching in IRCAM in Paris, the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre de Tallin, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (Holland), the Conservatory in Arhem (Holland), the Taller de Músicos in Gijón (Spain), the Taller de Músics in Barcelona (Spain) and the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Salamanca (Spain)."

"Barry John Guy (born 22 April 1947, in London) is a British composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He also taught at Guildhall School of Music.

Born in London, Guy came to the fore as an improvising bassist as a member of a trio with pianist Howard Riley and drummer Tony Oxley (Witherden, 1969). He also became an occasional member of John Stevens' ensembles in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. In the early 1970s, he was a member of the influential free improvisation group Iskra 1903 with Derek Bailey and trombonist Paul Rutherford (a project revived in the late 1970s, with violinist Philipp Wachsmann replacing Bailey). He also formed a long-standing partnership with saxophonist Evan Parker, which led to a trio with drummer Paul Lytton which became one of the best-known and most widely travelled free-improvising groups of the 1980s and 1990s. He was briefly a member of the Michael Nyman Band in the 1980s, performing on the soundtrack of The Draughtsman's Contract.

Guy's interests in improvisation and formal composition received their grandest form in the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. Originally formed to perform Guy's composition Ode in 1972 (released as a 2-LP set on Incus and later, in expanded form, as a 2-CD set on Intakt), it became one of the great large-scale European improvising ensembles. Early documentation is spotty - the only other recording from its early years is Stringer (FMP, now available on Intakt paired with the later "Study II") - but beginning in the late 1980s the Swiss label Intakt set out to document the band more thoroughly. The result was a series of ambitious, album-length compositions designed to give all the players in the band maximum opportunity for expression while still preserving a rigorous sense of form: Zurich Concerts, Harmos, Double Trouble (originally written for an encounter with Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra, though the eventual CD was just for the LJCO), Theoria (a concerto for guest pianist Irène Schweizer), Three Pieces, and Double Trouble Two. The group's activities subsided in the mid-1990s, but it was never formally disbanded, and reconvened in 2008 for a one-off concert in Switzerland. In the mid-1990s Guy also created a second, smaller ensemble, the Barry Guy New Orchestra.

Guy has also written for other large improvising ensembles, such as the NOW Orchestra and ROVA (the piece Witch Gong Game inspired by images by the visual artist Alan Davie).

His current improvising activities include piano trios with Marilyn Crispell and Agusti Fernandez. He has also recorded several albums for ECM, which often focus on the interface between improvisers and electronics, including his work in Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and his own Ceremony.

Guy's session work in the pop field includes playing double bass on the song "Nightporter", from the Japan album Gentlemen Take Polaroids.

He is married to the early music violinist Maya Homburger. After spending some years in Ireland, they now live in Switzerland. They run the small label Maya, which releases a variety of records in the genres of free improvisation, baroque music and contemporary composition.

Guy's jazz work is characterised by free improvisation, using a range of unusual playing methods: bowed and pizzicato sounds beneath the bass's bridge; plucking the strings above the left hand; beating the strings with percussion instrument mallets; and "preparing" the instrument with sticks and other implements inserted between the strings and fingerboard. His improvisations are often percussive and unpredictable, inhabiting no discernible harmonic territory and pushing into unknown regions. However, they can also be melodious and tender with due regard for harmonic integration with other players, and at times he will even play with a straight jazz swing feel.

Similarly, in his concert works, Guy manages to alternate harmonic and rhythmic complexity worthy of 1960s experimentalists such as Penderecki and Stockhausen with joyous, often ecstatic, melody. Works such as "Flagwalk" for string orchestra and "Fallingwater - Concerto for Orchestra" display Guy's compositional skill in handling extended forms and writing for large instrumental groups.

Some of his compositions, such as "Witch Gong Game" for ensemble, use graphic notation in conjunction with cue cards to lead performers into playing and improvising material from numbered sections of the score.

He is also an architect."

"Ramon Lopez was born on August 6th 1961 in Alicante, Spain. Drummer, Percussionist and Composer. He began as a self-taught drummer in the mid-1970's. Witnessing a Max Roach solo concert in 1980 was a turning point that fundamentally changed his understanding of music. He was part of local groups until he decided to move to Paris in January 1985 and became increasingly involved in the experimental scene in France. At the same time, he developed an interest in Indian music, and took tabla lessons with Krishna Govinda K.C. He is currently a student of Pandit Subhankar Banerjee, while teaching Indian music himself with Patrick Moutal at the Paris Conservatory (1994-2001) His first recording as a leader, an album of solo drums, was released in 1997 on the British Leo label linked to free jazz music and improvisation. Besides Jazz and Indian music, he is attracted especially to flamenco music. He has worked with some of the great flamenco artists, among them Carmen Linares, Esperanza Fernández, Inés Bacán, Gerardo Núñez, Rafael de Utrera, Chano Domínguez, etc... His musical endeavours have always been challenging; his interpretation of songs from the Spanish civil war (2001) spring to mind, or his duos dedicated to Roland Kirk (2002). From 1997 to 2000 he was drummer in the renowned French Orchestre National de Jazz under Didier Levallet, who continues to expand the traditional vocabulary of the orchestra with new elements. Among many others, Lopez has worked at concerts and festivals and in the recording studio with the following musicians of the jazz avant-garde: Beñat Achiary, Rashied Ali, Majid Bekkas, Anthony Coleman, Andrew Cyrille, Sophia Domancich, Agustí Fernández, Glenn Ferris, Sonny Fortune, Barry Guy, Charles Gayle, Teppo Hauta-Aho, Howard Johnson, Hans Koch, Joachim Kuhn, Daunik Lazro, Jeanne Lee, Thierry Madiot, Roscoe Mitchell, Joe Morris, Ivo Perelman, Enrico Rava, Paul Rogers, Louis Sclavis, Alain Silva, Archie Shepp, John Surman, Claude Tchamitchian, Mal Waldron, Christine Wodrascka... Ramon Lopez is an un-typical percussionist. He is a musician who has mastered a number of different musical traditions. He loves to work with artists from other disciplines, with actors, choreographers or visual artists. He is currently one of the most respected European musicians in the area of contemporary jazz or improvised music. The French government named him "Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters" in 2008."-Jorge García, Institut Valencia de la Musica.